Nepse sheds 22.06pts as investors wait for high interest rates to fall
Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) last week shed 22.06 points to close at 1,139.57 points, with high interest rates on bank loans weighing on investors’ minds despite the regulator—Securities Board of Nepal—enforcing a number of measures to boost investor sentiment.
Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) last week shed 22.06 points to close at 1,139.57 points, with high interest rates on bank loans weighing on investors’ minds despite the regulator—Securities Board of Nepal—enforcing a number of measures to boost investor sentiment.
Despite a fall in the market index, the average daily turnover increased to Rs304.48 million from Rs267.63 million in the previous week.
The secondary market that opened at 1,161.63 points on Sunday slid 8.51 points on the first trading day to close at 1,153.12 points. The slide continued on Monday, with the index losing 8.85 points before picking up 2.83 points on Tuesday. However, the market shed 7.38 points and 0.15 points on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.
In overall trading, the market declined by 1.89 percent over the review period.
Stockbrokers said the minor measures introduced by the regulator failed to boost the market. “As the banks are still maintaining high interest rate on loans despite reducing their base rate, investors are waiting for the situation to change,” said a stockbroker under condition of maintaining anonymity.
The sensitive index that measures the performance of blue chip companies also declined 4.19 points to close at 242.61 points with a fall in the sub-indices of all 11 trading groups.
This resulted in Rs26.58 billion being wiped out from the market as the market capitalisation fell to Rs1,390.63 billion from Rs1,417.21 billion.
Of the trading groups, life insurance lost the largest of 188.28 points and closed at 5,832.48 points. The sub-index of non-life insurance dropped 94.15 points, followed by manufacturing (79 points), hydropower (48.67 points), hotels (26.98 points), ‘others’ (23.49 points) and microfinance (19.91 points).
Development banks and commercial banks also posted double digit losses, with a downfall of 16.21 points and 12.93 points respectively. Likewise, finance companies lost 5.75 points while trading lost 2.7 points during the review period.
Among the individual companies listed on the secondary market, shares of Upper Tamakoshi were the most sought after, with investors spending Rs104.48 million, the largest over the review period. It was followed by Nepal Bank Limited, Nepal Doorsanchar Company Limited, promoters’ shares of Machchhapuchhre Bank and Citizen Investment Trust.
Last week, stocks worth Rs1.52 billion were transacted, which was 14.28 percent more than the transaction amount in the previous week. The total number of traded shares also increased to 5,103,596 units from 4,572,860 units.
Over the review period, Nepse listed 118,137 units of bonus shares of Hamro Bikas Bank and a total of 3,403,721.3 units of bonus shares of City Express Finance and Sahara Bikas Bank.
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